Meaningful Urban Education Reform

Based on a three-year study of the National Science Foundation’s Urban Systemic Initiative, Meaningful Urban Education Reform is an overview of recent attempts to change teaching in mathematics and science in urban environments. The book evaluates the impact of educational reform on urban schools, determines how schools with the highest levels of poverty in the United States can make successful changes, and investigates how communities and policy makers contribute to student achievement.
Contributors provide compelling portraits of classrooms, teachers, and students in elementary, middle, and high schools through case studies and examples from intensive research in four locations: Chicago, El Paso, Memphis, and Miami. They interviewed, observed, and gathered information from district administrators, school principals, teachers, students and their parents, and community members. The book provides valuable insight into how systemic reform works, offers suggestions regarding assessment of successful learning environments, and addresses the need for intensive, long-term professional development for the purpose of engaging teachers with their colleagues in communities of practice supported by a strong school culture.

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Illustrations

Tables

Preface

Traditions in both applied anthropology and applied sociology
emphasize the importance of the role of the activist researcher. In general,
this role links the work done in the field with praxis. In the case of the project
undertaken here, there was obvious overlap between the goals of the
National Science Foundation’s Urban Systemic Initiatives program and
an activist/researcher approach to evaluation. Specifically, the mission of...

Acknowledgments

The support and guidance of colleagues and friends throughout
the course of our project, “Assessing the Impact of the National Science
Foundation’s Urban Systemic Initiative,” helped contribute to the success
of this research. We would like to thank the directors of the Urban
Systemic Initiatives and their staff members in our four research sites.
Their continuous support of our project enabled us to conduct our...

Abbreviations

Chapter 1

Urban schools have been the target of a series of reforms over the
last twenty or more years. During this time, strategies for school
improvement to prevent student failure have addressed a wide range of
matters: school safety, computer use, parent involvement, business partnerships,
and more. Many claim that these earlier efforts have been...

Chapter 2

This chapter presents findings from our research that address the
questions that guided our policy study. Specifically, we address the question:
What is the role of institutional and individual leadership in systemic
reform? By looking critically at the role played by key players at the district
and school levels, we are able to achieve a better understanding of...

Chapter 3

This statement from two Miami-Dade community stakeholders
demonstrates the fact that when stakeholders become involved in educating
students, their involvement can take any number of forms, from
academic to social or something in between. A dramatic increase in
awareness concerning the relationship among home, school, and community...

Chapter 4

To teach in ways envisioned by the national standards, educators
must not only be well grounded in content and pedagogical knowledge;
they should also understand how students’ cognitions guide
their learning of mathematics and science. Teachers must then provide
instruction that allows students to be engaged fully and actively with
the subject matter at hand. To engage in the best instructional practices:...

Chapter 5

This chapter presents data related to teaching and learning in themathematics and science classrooms we visited over the course of ourresearch. A fundamental principle of effective systemic reform is thatchanges must occur in classroom practices, and such changes mustenhance student learning. Therefore, a major portion of this research was...

Chapter 6

Our evaluation of the impact of systemic reform moved beyond
achievement scores on standardized assessments in mathematics and
science to include a measure of students’ participation in their own learning.
Standards-based reform practices in both mathematics and science
call for increased activity that engages students and leads to increased...

Chapter 7

Arguably the most important aspect of the work we undertook
over a three-year period in the four urban sites was to address the question
of how well USI reforms in mathematics and science worked to
close achievement gaps between groups of underserved students and
their more privileged counterparts. Our aim throughout this research
was to determine the impact of the NSF reform agenda on student...

Chapter 8

Improving student outcomes is a complex enterprise linking
teachers’ professional development activities and their subsequent
classroom practices. Previous research is clear that professional development
is indeed an effective lever for improving classroom instruction.
Many studies have shown that when teachers are provided...

Chapter 9

Understanding the factors that enhance the impact of systems
reform is critically important for many reasons. Perhaps the most important
of these is that equitable reform of urban education is necessary to
insure both a just and a prosperous society. Large urban districts educate
25 percent of all school-age students, 35 percent of all poor students, 30
percent of all English-language...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.